All I saw was emptiness. Wherever he looked, all he saw was darkness. He did not remember how he had reached this state. I no longer had a body; I was just a floating flame ... I tried to remember who I was, my tastes and my family, but the more time passed, the blurrier everything became, like sand slipping through fingers ... I didn't know how much time had passed, but something happened.
Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled and dragged; it was a terrifying sensation, even without a body. I felt as if I was being molded and structured into something new. Fear was the only thing that filled my mind for what seemed like hours. When I regained some control, I felt it: a weak body, but mine nonetheless.
For a while I noticed how I grew and developed more senses, which led me to realize that I was in the womb of who is now my mother. As the months went by, touch developed, which made me realize that I was about to be born.
____________________________________
1977, Hogsmeade was covered in snow, like a postcard frozen in time. This year's winter was creeping through the cracks in the windows and between the bones of the unsuspecting. The streets were nearly empty, save for hooded figures slipping into the shadows, seeking warmth or silence.
He walked casually. He was tall, thin as a knife, the cloak wrapped around him seemed an extension of himself. No one dared to stop him. No one looked directly at him. No one... except one person.
"My lord", said a firm but unexpected voice.
He stopped.
In front of him, a young woman. No more than twenty, fair face, dark eyes, hair matted by wind and snow.
"You know who I am" he murmured, without turning around at all.
"I know enough" she replied, "and I know that no one else would dare speak to you."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the icy whistle of the wind.
"You're either brave" he said at last, "or very stupid."
"Isn't it the same thing?" she asked.
He turned and, for the first time, stared at her.
Elaine Harper was her name.
A dirty blood, a Ravenclaw student, the daughter of a Muggle librarian and an elementary school teacher. She had nothing to offer him. No bloodline, no legacy. Just intense, wild, almost primal magic. A magic that seemed to have been born without a mold.
And for a reason he still didn't understand, he didn't kill her.
For weeks they met in secret. She talked. He listened. She would talk to him about books, about ideas, about what the world could be if it stopped dividing into clean bloods and dirty bloods. He didn't argue. He just watched.
Elaine's magic slipped through his fingers, uncontainable. He studied it. He tested it. He thought about using it, and maybe he did. But with each encounter, something slipped through her fingers: control.
One night, in an old forgotten house near the Forest of Dean, she watched him for some time.
"You're not what they think you are" she said.
"And you don't know what you're saying" he replied coolly.
"I do know. But I still believe it"
That night he left without saying goodbye.
The spring of 1978 brought more than flowers. Elaine was pregnant.
She didn't tell him. She didn't have to. He knew. He felt it. Something in his essence had changed.
By the time he confronted it, it was too late.
"I don't want you to want me" she told him, through tears, "I just want you to know that I'm going to have it. With or without you."
He did not answer. His gaze turned to stone as he looked at her. He spun on his heel and disappeared into the shadows, as if he had never been there.
Elaine never saw him again.
July came with storms.
The cabin was protected by rudimentary enchantments, just enough to keep it hidden. Elaine's magic had begun to wear thin. Her body was young, but already broken inside.
When the contractions started, there was no one else. No healers, no friends. Just her, the rain pounding on the roof and a pain that snapped her like dry twigs.
She tried to help herself with simple spells, but the words came out choppy, her wand trembled and the blood began to flow too fast.
The labor was long. Agonizing.
And then, at last, a cry.
A baby boy. Pale, thin, with dark eyes that shone in the moonlight. But in his gaze, even as a newborn, there was something ... old. As if the soul that inhabited that body had already lived too long.
Elaine held him with both hands, her body trembling with spasms. He was bleeding uncontrollably, barely conscious.
She pulled him close to her chest with what little strength she had left.
"You shall be called ... Aurelian Riddle" he whispered. "You will bear his last name. Not because he deserves it... but because you will transform it into something noteworthy."
The child opened his eyes for the first time. His crying stopped.
Elaine smiled, broken.
"You are more than him ... more than me ..."
Her fingers loosened. The head fell to the side and so Elaine Harper died.
(minutes earlier)
From one moment to the next I felt something pushing me, it was different from anything I had experienced before, not more painful, just different. Being born is not a pleasant thing to feel, during my stay in the womb I managed to connect with memories that were distant to me before, my hypothesis was simple without a brain there is no way to connect with them.
I realized what I was like, I had a family I cherished, parents and a brother two years younger, I liked to watch anime and read in my free time and by all accounts I was not someone who was considered sociable so I spent most of my time at home, I lived until I was 17 when a car accident on a school trip ended my life, ironic no, I barely left the house, to end up dying this way.
My last memories of that life were filled with regrets and unfulfilled desires.
Returning to my birth I felt how the wind crashed against my body causing me to scream, I tried to open my eyes but I could not find the strength to do it, then I felt how some hands embraced me, they were comforting and full of feelings, I knew that this person was my new mother.
Then I heard some words that shook me internally "You'll be called .... Aurelian Riddle", inside I thought of the possibilities of being the son of a bald man with no nose. The next thing I heard confirmed my assumptions "You will bear his last name. Not because he deserves it...but because you will transform it into something noteworthy", I cursed my luck, being the son of a narcissistic murderer is not the best starting point.
The next second I opened my eyes only to observe how life left my mother's body, before she passed away she smiled at me "You are more than him.... more than me...", after her last words she died.
I felt something or someone approaching me. It wasn't very tall, from my perspective. The moment he lifted me up, he pointed a finger at me, emitting a light that I assumed was a spell that plunged me into a deep sleep. In my last lucid moments, I hoped that this person had nothing to do with my father.
Somewhere in the north...
He knew it. Not by letters. Not by spies. Not by words. He felt it.
Like a vibration in the magic. A crack inside him. It wasn't sadness. It wasn't guilt. It was something else.
He said to himself
I wasn't supposed to care.
But for an instant, I felt the world tilting. Not because of his death. But because of what he left behind.
He did not leave. He didn't bury her. He didn't look at his son.
A week later, under a rainy night, a hooded figure glided through the damp streets of London.
In front of the gate of the San Emerico orphanage, a woven basket was carefully placed. Inside, a baby covered with an enchanted blanket embroidered with a blue flower and a double initial: A.R.
No one saw the face of the one who abandoned him. No one heard footsteps. Only the slight creak of the wood as the door closed.
The next morning, a woman with a kind face found him. She took him in her arms and read the anonymous note sewn on the edge of the blanket:
"His name is Aurelian Riddle
Take care of him and give him another story."